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Orchids, the Ultimate in Tropical Success [1]
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Date: 2025-05-20
The family Orchidaceae is one of the largest known families of vascular plants, having 28,000 species in over 700 genera (See: en.wikipedia.org/...). It has filled in numerous nitches, except for trees (the largest orchid is Grammatophyllum speciosum, which can reach over 3 meters tall and several meters wide, but it is really not a tree.) I became fascinated with them many years ago when I learned the word “epiphyte” in, if you can believe it, a Tarzan comic book. Many tropical orchids are epiphytes, that is they grow on trees, but not as parasites like mistletoe, at least not on the trees on which they grow. Many bromeliads are also epiphytes, as are some mosses and ferns. Mostly they get their their food from dust and photosynthesis, and some bromeliads are partly carnivorous, digesting insects that fall into the tanks formed by their leaves.
Orchids probably originated in the late Cretaceous, but apparently speciated heavily in the last 5 million years. (See: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/...) Like the grasses, composites, and coiffee family they mainly expanded during the Tertiary.
Oncidium Orchids, Kanapaha Botanical Gardens, Gainesville, Florida.
Moth Orchids, Phalaenopsis hybrid, Kanapaha Botanical Gardens, Gainesville, Florida.
Native Greenfly Orchid, Epidendrum conopseum, Lake Kanapaha, Gainesville, Florida. This was a much more impressive plant, but an orchid thief got there before I could bring my camera!
Phalaenopsis hybrid, Volunteer Park Conservatory, Seattle, Washington.
Epidendrum nocturnum, Florida. Epiphytic.
Slipper orchid, Paphiopedilum, a terrestrial group, Volunteer Park Conservatory, Seattle, Washington. I’m not sure what the yellow orchids are.
I tried my hand at raising orchids, both in Florida and New Mexico, with several doing very well. In driving around south Florida with my Postdoc director Willard Whitcomb, I would often find myself at some garden or nursery that he spotted and at one point he had me stop at an orchid nursery south of Orlando. I was offered a Cattleya orchard of unknown parentage at a reasonable price and I couldn’t resist. It turned out to be a great purchase and it bloomed twice a year, with exactly two huge white flowers with a violet throat. When I left Florida for the last time I could not take the plant with me so I donated it to the Kanapaha Botanical Garden. It was hard to part with it and I stupidly never took a photo!
In New Mexico I quickly discovered that Chinese terrestrial orchids grew well in an outside pot and I was very successful with these. I tried both Bletilla and Pleione and got both to bloom. I have not been successful with these here in Washington and I’m not sure why.
Bletilla ochracea, blooming in Mesilla Park, New Mexico. An Asiatic terrestrial orchid and one of the easiest to grow genera.
Bletilla striata blooming in Mesilla Park, New Mexico. An Asiatic terrestrial orchid and one of the easiest to grow genera. This is the commonest species and color.
One adaptation orchids share with a totally unrelated family, the Apocynaceae, subfamily Asclepiadoideae, or milkweeds, is the grouping of pollen into structures called pollinia, which are sticky and easily picked up by pollinators. Some of these pollinators are actually tricked by the orchid into believing that the orchid flower is a female of its species, with the flower appearing so insect-like as to fool the ardent male wasp, who leaves with a batch of pollinia, rather than successfully passing on its genes to the next generation.
There is even an underground orchid (See: en.wikipedia.org/...) and some terrestrial orchids are parasitic on fungi and lack chlorophyll. Most orchids start life as parasites on fungi, but become fully photosynthetic after their leaves emerge (See: eberly.wvu.edu/....). Coralroot species are parasitic throughout their lifecycle, are quite rare, and may appear one year, and not be seen again for years.
Spotted Coralroot, Pine Ridge Park, Washington. Unfortunately past its prime.
If I had another lifetime, I could not think of a better occupation than of growing these wonders, and maybe Bromeliads and Carnivorous Plants!
Except for first photo, all photos by me.
References:
Brown, Paul Martin. 2003. The Wild Orchids of North America, North of Mexico.
Rogers, Bruce. 2012. The Orchid Whisperer: Expert Secrets for Growing Beautiful Orchids.
Various authors, 2002. Botanica’s Orchids.
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